London Metals Exchange Week

Every year the metals industry gathers in London for a week-long get-together to renew relationships, and forge fresh partnerships in a glut of parties, dinners and more technical events.

The largest annual gathering of its kind in the world, LME (London Metals Exchange) Week brings together producers, traders, analysts and financiers to ponder the previous year’s activities, and to attempt a forecast of what’s in store for the coming 12 months.

One of the foremost technical events is the Breakfast hosted by CRU Group, which lasts for four hours and offers plentiful networking opportunities for the industry’s professionals. Many of the team from Swann Global’s London office attended the event, meeting high-level contacts from the industry and attending the much-awaited outlook presentations by CRU.

The mood among those at the breakfast was unsurprisingly subdued, and the presentations outlined a complicated picture of the industry, in which the interplay between opposing factors required close and detailed analysis. While commodity prices were at levels that historically have indicated the bottom of the market, much now depended on the reaction by the Chinese producers, which CRU regarded as uncertain.